To wait or not?
 

I am going into college as a freshman this fall and I was thinking about rushing. However, I have a group of family members encouraging me to wait until my second semester, but I've also had a group of friends tell me that not doing it this fall will lessen my chances of getting a bid if I do decide to rush in the spring. Basically, I'm really confused if I should do it this fall or wait until spring? Advice please?

Your friends are right. If your campus conducts Formal Recruitment in the Fall, then yes, your best bet would be to participate in the Fall because all sororities will be participating then.

A few (if any) sororities participate in Informal Spring Recruitment, and even then, the number of bids distributed is limited, depending on how many spaces they have left till total.

Agreed. Go in the fall. If your parents are worried about your grades, I would remind them that Greek women consistently get higher GPAs than non-Greeks.

If you're in the South, especially at a competitive school, not only are your chances best in the fall of your freshman year, but the spring informal rush may not be publicized and only friends of current members will even hear about it. In addition, it's possible that very few sororities will have vacancies for spring anyway.

Right. We've seen and heard before of the few spots left to fill going to friends of current members or girls who've already participated in Fall Recruitment who didn't get a bid for whatever reason.

I doubt that you'll find anyone here saying you should wait till the Spring.

Well, it does depend on the campus some as to how damaging it is to wait.

I don't think it's ever an advantage to wait, unless it's really uncompetitive to join but the groups have distinct reputations that can't be discerned in recruitment. Is there such a place?

MissLittleBug, where are you going to school?

I'm going to Eastern Kentucky University in the fall. I'm not sure about how competitive it is there.
The only thing I'm worried about with participating in the fall is that I didn't exactly have the best grades my senior year of high school, my final GPA was around 2.5.

Paging ThetaPrincess24! ThetaPrincess24 is a Theta alum and advisor there.

In this thread, she did mention that it isn't as competitive as UK or some of the other SEC schools, but grades, extra-curricular activites, and recs are important.

You have nothing to lose by trying in the fall.

Thank you all for responding to my question. I'm going to go ahead and try this fall!

MissLittleBug,
I would ask the panhellenic (or greek) adviser if your grades are sufficient to go through. At our school, I believe incoming freshmen need an average of about a 3.0 and upperclassmen need about a 2.5 (each sorority is slightly different in their requirement). If you took summer school full time, then those grades can be technically counted. In this case, you may want to study very hard your first year, get awesome grades, and then go through next year.

This will be campus (and sorority) dependent. In other words, if Panhellenic says you are OK, you may still be below some sororities' gpa requirement and thus dropped only for that reason.

I am being completely honest here, so you know in advance what may occur.

I wish you the best of luck. Let us know what you decide to do.

Go through recruitment this fall, you have nothing to loose and can withdraw during the process if you so choose. At worst you will meet tons of new people on campus and at best you may find a great organization to belong to. :D

After checking out EKU's AOII website, it looks like they have a formalized Spring recruitment process as well. I don't know if all chapters participate, but it does look as though all women are free to participate, not just friends of chapter members.

I would say try formal recruitment. Since your a freshman, it can be overwhelming being at a new school with so many new strangers. Joining a greek org can allow you to make many friends in a short period of time so that big campus doesnt seem so big ;)

Do make sure your GPA is at the freshman requirement before you register! If it isnt then work hard this semester and try informal or you always have the option of waiting til next fall.